Building the Best PC for World of Tanks

Last updated: July 2018

This guide recommends specific PC builds so that you can build a PC to run World of Tanks at silky smooth framerates in maximum graphical glory. Different computer components have different impacts on the game's performance, and we explain those impacts in detail. We also go through the graphical settings in detail, so that you can optimize the game's look and performance. In World of Tanks, high framerates are important to reduce missed clicks and allow for smooth aiming, accurate fire and precise maneuvering. A fast PC won't improve your map awareness or decision making abilities, but a fast PC sure makes it easier to hit stuff.

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PC Build Performance in World of Tanks

At Logical Increments, we research and recommend parts for PC builds to help you get the best performance, reliability, and acoustics. These PC builds cover a wide range of budgets. As you spend more, you will get more performance. This is how the Logical Increments recommended builds will run World of Tanks:

These performance benchmarks are for World of Tanks on maximum graphical settings. You can achieve similar performance a tier or two lower by lowering the game's graphical settings.

The most powerful builds don't perform the best at all resolutions. This is unusual, but it's because the game is severely bottlenecked by single-threaded CPU performance. For a high-end build that overcomes this limitation, start with the Exceptional build, but upgrade the graphics cards and power supply with options from the Extremist build. This will give you the best performance possible in World of Tanks.

PC Builds for World of Tanks

These builds are optimized for a specific screen resolution. You can get a build meant for 4K (a higher resolution) and game at 1080p (a lower resolution) with no problem, but you can't get a build meant for 1080p and game at 4K and expect smooth framerates. Matching your build with your screen resolution will give you the best performance for your money.

WoT PC Hardware for 720p (1280 x 720)

The lowly Poor build, with a low-end AMD APU and no dedicated graphics card, should get you 60 FPS with Low to Medium settings at 720p. If you want to play with the settings turned up at 720p, you will need the Good tier or better to get 60 FPS.

WoT PC Hardware for 1080p (1920 x 1080)

If you’re willing to settle for ugly Low graphics settings, you can actually get close to a smooth 60 FPS—even at 1080p—with the Poor build. If you want to play at Medium settings, you’ll need to go up a couple tiers to the Modest build. And if you want the game to look its best on maximum settings, you’ll want to go up to at least the Excellent build to get a smooth 60 FPS.

WoT PC Hardware for 1440p (2560 x 1440)

If you’re playing at 1440p, you want to see World of Tanks in all its explodey glory. To get 60 FPS with max settings, go with the Exceptional build. If you have a 144 Hz screen and want more than 60 FPS, see the 4K builds.

WoT PC Hardware for 4K

The Extremist build will just get you to 60 FPS at 4K, and be a powerhouse for any other games or professional applications.
As an alternative, you can save money and actually improve performance in WoT (because of WoT’s poor multi-threading) by building the Exceptional tier, but replacing the graphics card and power supply with one of the options from Extremist. This custom build would give you the best performance possible in World of Tanks.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments or send us an email.

Choosing Gaming PC Parts for World of Tanks

The performance characteristics of World of Tanks are unusual. The game simultaneously boasts gorgeous tank models, while also being limited by the Bigworld game engine. Here are the official system requirements for World of Tanks, straight from the developer, Wargaming:

Which CPUs Perform Best in World of Tanks?

Surprisingly, an inexpensive i3 (such as the i3-8100) will actually provide better performance in WoT than the highest-end $1000+ Extreme CPUs. This is because the game client software is very poorly threaded, struggling to make good use of even two cores. The best performance is achieved by CPUs with the highest single-threaded performance, such as the i5-8600K or the i7-8700K. AMD CPUs, which have better multi-threaded performance but worse single-threaded performance, do not perform as well in WoT.

Which GPUs Perform Best in World of Tanks?

To get 60 FPS at 1080p with settings maxed out, we recommend a GTX 1060 6GB. For 1440p, a GTX 1070 is ideal. For 4K, we recommend going for a GTX 1080 Ti. See a wide variety of older cards tested at GameGPU:

How Much RAM Does the Graphics Card Need for World of Tanks?

VRAM is the amount of RAM on your graphics card.

VRAM requirements in WoT are light. Even 4K only needs 2GB of VRAM. Any reasonably powerful card will have at least 2GB of VRAM. If you have to choose between a card with a more powerful GPU or a card with more VRAM, choose the card with the powerful GPU.

How Much RAM Does World of Tanks Need?

WoT is nice and light on system RAM usage. Even if you have 32GB of RAM, it will only use about 3.5GB. 2GB is the bare minimum, and 4GB is plenty. If you're building a new PC, you might as well get 8GB if you plan on playing more demanding games or having a bunch of stuff open in the background.

Do I Need an SSD for World of Tanks?

Having a decent SSD will making the game load faster, and load into matches faster (so that you can sit and watch the timer tick down). An SSD is a great investment for general PC use, but doesn’t make much difference for WoT.

How Many Frames Per Second (FPS) is Enough?

Frames per second (FPS) is a measurement of the number of images your computer can produce every second. Higher frame rates mean that your screen will show more images per second, which means that you will see a smoother animation. Lower frame rates cause a game to appear to stutter, which is disturbing.

A comparison of 50, 25, and 12.5 FPS.

We recommend computers that will achieve 60 FPS. Some gamers are satisfied with frame rates as low as 30, but that depends largely on the gamer and the game. Slower paced games can be enjoyable at lower framerates. Because of the fast pace of World of Tanks, it is most comfortable at 60+ FPS.

Higher Resolution for Better Gaming

A comparison of several common resolutions.

Resolution refers to the number of pixels on a screen. High resolution means more pixels and generally more space and detail, while low resolution means fewer pixels, and often less space. If you are using a typical (not high-end) laptop or an old screen, you likely have a low resolution. When comparing screens with a similar aspect ratio, it is always better to get a higher resolution screen. Higher resolution will always looks better, as you have more real estate and a sharper picture. The only downside is that for gaming, higher resolution takes a correspondingly more powerful computer. The image below shows the difference in real estate between common resolutions.

World of Tanks Graphical Settings

Optimizing your graphical settings will give you the best combination of attractive visuals and smooth performance. World of Tanks scales well from Low to High settings. At Low settings, the game gets quite ugly, but can be playable on very inexpensive or old hardware. At High settings, the game looks very nice, but requires powerful hardware to run smoothly.

Choosing the Best Graphics Settings for World of Tanks

If your computer can't handle the game with settings on Maximum, try the following steps, ordered by how they affect the game's visuals:

Improve FPS (slightly) with little to no impact on visuals:

Disable Motion Blur Effect

Disable Track Traces

Disable Vertical Synchronization

Improve FPS (by a large amount) with a moderate impact on visuals:

In addition to the above steps:

Lower Antialiasing to FXAA

Set Shadow Quality to Low

Try lowering the Render Resolution and see if you mind the blurriness

If that wasn't enough, try the "Recommended" button, or start lowering:

Water Quality

Decals Quality

Lighting Quality

Extra Effects to Low

If you’re stuck on a really slow system, there are a couple more ways you can eek out more performance:

Use the SD client, rather than the HD client. This is an option in the WoT Launcher settings.

Change Graphics from Improved to Standard. This will use older, simpler rendering that doesn't look as good but performs better.

Very last resort:

Set everything as low as you can tolerate.

If you try all of the above and still can’t run the game as smoothly as you would like, you may need to upgrade your hardware.

Detailed Graphical Settings for World of Tanks

We have gone through the settings and tested their performance impact, and given a subjective opinion on how much visual impact we think they have. You can optimize your settings by turning up the settings with high visual impact and lower performance impact, and turning down the settings with low visual impace and high performance impact. Note that the performance numbers will change a bit with different hardware, and visual impact is subjective. So it's worth doing your own experimenting. A good place to start is to use the "Recommended" button, which will do a good job choosing settings for common hardware configurations.

Settings are ordered according to performance impact:

1. Graphics Quality

Visual Impact: Very High

Performance Impact: Very High, up to 60%

These are the graphical "presets." Maximum has everything turned all the way up, and looks very pretty. Minimum runs more than twice as fast and can help WoT run on a low-end system, but it looks ugly. If you don't want to mess with all the advanced settings, the medium and high settings do a decent job of balancing performance and appearance.

2. 3D Render Resolution

This allows you to change the resolution of the 3D parts of the game. Lowering this setting can greatly improve your performance, but it will also make the game look blurry. It is similar to lowering your screen resolution or window size, except that changing 3D Render Resolution will not affect the 2D game interface (ammo count, minimap, aiming cursor, etc). This allows you to scale the interface separately. If you don’t mind the blurriness and want more performance, this can be a reasonable way to get it. The Dynamic adjustment will automatically adjust this setting as-needed, and is a good option. If you have a reasonably powerful system, leave it at 100%.

3. Screen Resolution / Window Size

Visual Impact: High

Performance Impact: High, up to about 35%

Rendering at a lower resolution means fewer pixels have to be calculated, greatly reducing the load on your graphics card. However, you also lose a lot of visual detail. And if your monitor has trouble scaling, or if you pick the wrong aspect ratio, the image can get stretched. It’s better to use the very similar 3D Render Resolution setting, so keep this at the native resolution of your screen unless you desperately need better performance.

4. Vertical Synchronization (Vsync)

Visual Impact: Moderate

Performance Impact: Depends, Low to very high (50%)

This setting synchronizes your framerate with your monitor's refresh rate to eliminate “screen tearing.” Your monitor can’t display more frames than its refresh rate, so if your FPS is consistently higher than your Display Refresh Rate, you can turn this setting on. Otherwise, turn it off, because it can cut your FPS in half.

4a. Triple buffering

5. Shadow Quality

Visual Impact: High

Performance Impact: High, up to 25%

This setting determines the quality of shadows in the game. Turning off the shadows looks really bad, but even the low setting looks pretty good, and reduces the performance impact to about 7%. Turning shadows to Low is one of the first things I would do to improve performance.

TSSAA-HQ is much nicer, but also has a bigger drain on performance, giving a performance hit of roughly 15%.

7. Lighting Quality

Visual Impact: Moderate

Performance Impact: Moderate, up to 11%

Makes the lighting more or less realistic in subtle ways. It doesn’t look like a whole lot in the screenshots, but having lighting turned on higher makes the world feel more real and less flat. Low seems to be the same as Off, but the rest of the settings all the way up to Maximum make the lighting noticeably better. I like to keep it at maximum. This does not affect fires, explosions, or muzzle blasts.

11. Motion Blur Effect

Motion blur appears when driving or moving the camera quickly. Personally, we turn it off.

12. Track Traces

Visual Impact: Low

Performance Impact: Low, up to 5%

These are the marks in the ground left by your tracks. We like the idea of the track traces, but don’t think they are implemented particularly well. They have weird lighting, and they are often disappearing right in front of you, which breaks immersion. We turn them off.

13. Water Quality

Visual Impact: Moderate

Performance Impact: Low, up to 5%

Water looks nicer on higher settings. This only affects water, so the impact it has will depend on how much water is on screen.

14. Texture Quality

Visual Impact: High

Performance Impact: Minimal, up to 3%

This affects the detail of textures. Since pretty much everything you look at in the game has textures, this will have a big impact on how crisp things look. The performance impact is very low, as long as your graphics card has enough VRAM: 1GB for 1080p, 1.5GB for 1440p, and 2GB for 4K. If your card has enough VRAM, turn this setting up.

You can find the specific hardware recommendations for these builds on our main page, where it is kept up to date weekly: logicalincrements.com.

If anything is out-of-date or wrong, or you have any other comments or suggestions, please let us know in the comments below or email us at contact@logicalincrements.com. Hopefully this has been helpful! May RNG smile upon you.

About Us

Orion has been building computers for 24 years. He has been playing WoT since the KV-1 was so Russian Biased that it was the KV-2. He enjoys playing arty, rushing field on Malinovka, and camping base in top tier heavies. He stopped failing at light tanks just in time for corridor meta.

Logical Increments helps more than a million PC builders each year with hardware recommendations for any budget.